Getting all medieval on my ....

I was highly distressed recently to realise that The Australian Bureau of Statistics has put me into the middle-aged cohort, Once you pass 40, that's officially "it", you've summitted. All that's left for you now is to make it safely back to base camp and write your memoirs in the hope that these will pay for it all.

Even more distressing and disappointing is just how much sympathy I haven't gotten from my nearest and (now formerly) dearest. My loud denunciations of this egregious mistake of categorisation are met not with rousing cries and exhorations to man the picket lines but with slight smiles, a shake of the head and softly spoken treachery in the form of statements like, "Well you are, dear". It's as if they are keen for my demise to begin. Well, I warn you all now, there's not that much there to inherit just yet so don't wish me gone too quickly.

And so it seems that I am now medieval. Not that I'm all that happy about it.

Firstly, the middle ages were characterised by the feudal system with older men at the top in positions of seniority and respect with all sorts of privileges including the droit de signeur. Tragically I find myself, at 41,  sans castle, sans vassals and with my wife keeping a close eye on any exercising of droits that might be in contemplation. Given some of the conversations I heard at the shopping centre this morning, however, I appear to be well supplied in the way of fools.

(How on Earth can you turn a metal tin, designed to store one's dishwasher tablets, humorously shaped as a dishwasher, into a ten minute conversation?)

I don't like the idea of middle age. I don't look at myself in the mirror all that much - probably because the answer to the question I might ask said mirror would almost certainly be "Well it sure ain't you, pal" but I don't think I look old enough to be middle-aged just yet.

Middle age always reminds me of the couple in the Meaning of Life

Struggling to find anything interesting enough any more to warrant talking about. And I just can't see myself in that hat.

It's a time of life when sexual attractiveness has faded to a pleasant reminiscence and that's not good. Middle aged people are probably sexually attractive to one another, but that's hardly the point. As any man will tell you, it's not a question of actually wanting to have an affair, it's just the knowledge that you'd be at the starting line with other contenders in the Golden Chase for 25 year olds, having blitzed through in the qualifying rounds.

It's also the time of life your parents were at in the earliest real memories you have of them. You were ten or twelve and they were 40 or thereabouts. And they were always old. Parents were always old and uncool and finding their joy in coffee and chat, not sunny beach and silly buggers. I don't want to think of myself as having reached the stage where my children will start at loving contempt and slowly graduate to doting pity and finally sympathetic visits and loud inquiries as to whether I've remembered to take my pills today.

There is also that first hint of gathering darkness, just out there on the horizon. I can see the distant flashes of lightning and know that the storm approacheth. Unlike the me of my adolescent delusions, this me will not live forever, hiding out in society and changing my name every eighty years so that people don't get all hysterical and burn me for a warlock. I will die at some point. This brilliant coruscation that is consciousness will one day be gone and I have no evidence at all that my being will continue beyond that point. I am not afraid but I'm not happy about it.

So I've decided that my own person medieval period will be short. Enter my personal Leonardo and my own Renaissance. Quite how that's going to work in reality, I don't know but I'll keep you posted.